


By Any Other Word

by lorannah



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:04:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorannah/pseuds/lorannah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas is restless and, as it turns out, he's not alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Any Other Word

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophieisgod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophieisgod/gifts).



> This is set after the traveling fayre in episode 4 and is inspired, at least partly, by the deleted scene from that episode. I owe huge thanks to Melodious B for a fantastic beta. All the remaining mistakes are my own.

**  
_There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio..._   
**

 

There weren’t many hours of the day when Downton was truly quiet, but that night a peace had settled over them, and everybody could have died, except for the slow hushed breathing of the unconscious. To Thomas it was silently suffocating. Where the fete had exhausted the others, it had made him restless and left him victim to his own thoughts.

The quiet let them loose, set them free: the doubts, the frustration, the plans, the anger. Sometimes it was deafening. And it let his longing thrum through him, aching deep in his bones, driving him from his bed, to prowl through Downton’s corridors with the deep, dark settled in. Seeking out its secrets, its hidden nooks and crannies.

Though Thomas was no fool – he knew that if he was a cat, it was a caged one, testing only the limits of its own existence. All his grand dreams and possibilities had ebbed or were ebbing, leaving him empty. Longing for something, anything, else. For living prey. For soft flesh.

He could have kissed Daisy at the fete or after, if he’d actually wanted her. He’d seen the way she looked at him, lips slightly parted. Craving, desperate. But he didn’t. She was a game, nothing more. He wanted deeper entertainments - wildness, wide open plains... Instead he had been left with lonely, echoing corridors. There was no one in the house to distract him, no one even in the village. It was all too dangerous, too seen, too close.

He wanted London. Even Manchester would have done. He wanted more people and more opportunities and the freedom of not being known. He wanted alleyways and small backroom bars and men whose name he’d never even bother to learn.

It had been too long since the Duke left, too long since he felt bare hands upon his skin, fingers interlacing with his, playing along his spine and across his chest. Too long since he felt lips upon his flesh, against his neck, upon his own.

Thomas knew he was half chasing his memories of the Duke through Downton, though few of them were nice. But then, nice had never been a concern of theirs. He was so caught between the then and now that as he saw a flicker of candlelight and the shape of a man reflected in a mirror, he could almost imagine it was him. Returned.

He fell back against the wall as the light grew closer, turning the corner, revealing... William. Out of bed and out of bounds. Curiosity alone would have made him follow, but it felt almost like instinct, as if he could have done nothing else.

Thomas found it an odd experience to find William so unguarded. He’d watched him plenty of times before - judging his weaknesses, discovering if he was a threat - but this was different. Then William had known he was being watched, hunched and unassuming. Now he was taller, straighter, more assured. He was slender, Thomas noticed for the first time.

He was so caught in this new examination of him, of William’s hips and elbows that Thomas did not realise where he was being led until they reached the music room.

The room was in a part of the house that the family rarely found reason to visit any longer, out of sight and out of sound. Forgotten. Moonlight spilling through the tall windows, creating a lattice of light and shadow across the wooden floor. It felt like a museum.

Barely pausing to set the candle down on the floor, William walked straight to the grand piano, sat down and began to play.

The music was gentle and almost erratic, melodies twisting together beneath William’s fingers, easing into each other. It was languid night-time music, made for stars and dreams and cold, moonlit rooms. It drew Thomas through; his breath caught in his throat, and if William had not been so lost in the music he would surely have heard its soft exhalation, once a pause in the notes let him breathe again.

He found he could not look away from William’s hands as they moved, deft and confident, across the keys. His fingers were long, and for a moment Thomas imagined how they would feel running along his neck, tracing his shoulder blades, pressed against his chest.

Thomas dragged his eyes away from them, a jolt of horror running through him; he had been lonely too long. He meant to seek the windows and the view but instead his eyes took in the set of William’s back bent over the piano, his head bowed, and his hair softer and messier than during the day, falling into his eyes, where his eyelashes brushed against his cheek.

William turned suddenly, the music shuddering to a halt, surprise turning to horror and fear.  The collar of his shirt was loose, several buttons undone and Thomas could see the dimple at the base of his neck.

“Keep playing.” It came out too soft; he’d meant it to be mocking and harsh. A command. It sounded instead like a request.

William hesitated for a second, then standing he tried to push past him, Thomas caught his arm. “I told you to keep playing.” That sounded better.

“I don’t have to do what you tell me, here.”

 Thomas could hear the anger and frustration in William’s voice, could feel the way he was trembling with suppressed rage and longing for release, and for a brief, unsettling moment he wondered how else he could make him tremble.

“Really? Given that I’ve caught you sneaking around where you shouldn’t be, I think you’d be wise to do what I say or I might let it slip to Carson,” Thomas pushed him back towards the piano stool. “Play.”

William hesitated, just for a second, and then sat back down and began to play again. The music was jerky now, and disjointed. It pushed Thomas away, where before it had drawn him close. William was scowling down at the keys, refusing to look at him. Thomas walked slowly around the piano, watching his own reflection shining back at him in its polished surface. He could remember polishing it himself.

“Horatio’s from Hamlet,” he said suddenly, not sure where the thought had come from.

William’s long fingers stopped, hovering above the keys as he darted a glance upwards. “What?”

“I didn’t tell you to stop playing,” Thomas snapped at him and hesitantly he began to play again, looking back down. “You wanted to know earlier who Horatio was. He’s from Hamlet. By Shakespeare. God, do you know nothing?”

“What use do I have for Shakespeare? I can shoe a horse and mend a collar and be useful, what good’s words?”

“Or pianos? Or a valet with nothing to say? If you’re ever a valet. Masters need men they can talk to, who can give them advice.”

William was still refusing to look at him. “And what great advice can Shakespeare give? Or Hamlet?”

“ _To thine own self be true.”_ It merited him a quick glance. _“And my soul, what can it do to that? Being a thing immortal as itself.”_

There was the briefest hesitation in the music, so quick as to be almost imaginary, and then the piano filled the space where words should have been. Thomas waited for a second, watching him play.

“ _The expense of spirit in a waste of shame,”_ he began again. It wasn’t Hamlet but it wasn’t as if William would know any better, and it was the only thing he could remember the whole of. _“Is lust in action: and till action, lust.”_

William looked up at him sharply, though his playing did not falter this time. Thomas caught his eyes, holding them.

 _“Is perjur'd, murderous, bloody, full of blame,  
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;  
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight...”_

The Duke had said these words to him, as he bedded him, arching him backwards, kissing his throat and pressing the words softly into his ears. Onto his breath. Later, he’d written them and sealed them and sent them. And later still, burnt them. The words smelt to Thomas of ashes and darkness.

 _“Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,  
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait...”_

William was watching him intently now, his expression naked with surprise and curiosity. And the notes he was playing had begun to match the melody of the words, twisting around them, underscoring them. Thomas was drawing him now.

 _“On purpose laid to make the taker mad:  
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;  
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;  
A bliss in proof,— and proud and very woe...”_

He moved further around the piano, closer to William, close enough to touch him. The boy’s eyes were still on him. Fingers still moving deftly, in aching rhythms.

 _“Before, a joy propos'd; behind a dream.  
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well  
To shun the heaven...” _

As he said the word heaven, he reached out and touched him at last. Ran his fingers down his cheek and along his throat. William shuddered, hands falling from the piano – but he didn’t jolt back, instead he leaned forward, until Thomas’ hand was cradling his cheek.

 _“...that leads men to this hell,”_ Thomas said into the silence. Neither were moving now.

William’s eyes were scared, but Thomas was not holding him, he could move, pull away, if he wished. He could run but he hadn’t. Thomas pulled him upward, pushing the piano stool aside and pressing him backwards against the piano with a twisted chord. Bodies together, one hand on his hip, the other still on his cheek. Thomas lingered for a second, lips almost touching but not quite, feeling the quickening of William’s breath before finally he kissed him.

They broke apart, lips parting, and tentatively William reached up and ran a finger along his cheek, soft and uncertain. He was pale in the moonlight.

“What does this mean?” He asked, and Thomas laughed softly.

“Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a pause.”

 **  
  
**

**  
_... Than are dreamt of in your philosophy._   
**

**Author's Note:**

> The sonnet Thomas quotes in this is Shakespeare's Sonnet 129 - which is very much not a love sonnet. Somehow, it was the only one that seemed to fit Thomas and the Duke's relationship for me. I hope this says more about them than about me.


End file.
